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Bullion River Gold’s
vision is to be the next great American Gold Producer
Metals
Mining Exploration
(BLRV-OTC: BB)
Bullion River Gold Corp.
1325 Airmotive Way, Suite 325
Reno, NV 89502
Phone: 775-324-4881
Peter M. Kuhn
President
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
June 16, 2005
BIO:
Peter M. Kuhn - President
Peter M. Kuhn is a proactive senior mining executive who has overseen all aspects of
mining engineering, development, production and service marketing in different facets of
mining operations, from industrial minerals in open pits to underground hard rock mines.
Peter received a Masters of Engineering (M.E.) from Technical University, Clausthal,
Germany. His 27 years experience in the mining industry includes working in Germany,
Canada, the US and South America, giving him a well rounded profile with experience in a
variety of mining operations. He was President of Thyssen Mining Construction of Canada
Ltd., President of the BLM Service Group. Furthermore, Peter served as Director of three
public companies and is presently a Director of Capstone Gold Corp., listed on the TSX.
Company Profile:
Bullion River Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on
discovering and developing gold-silver deposits in the western U.S., chiefly in Nevada and
California. The Company's goal is to become a significant gold producer as early as
2005.
Nevada is the world's third leading gold producer behind South Africa and
Australia. Significant discoveries continue to be made, and Bullion River Gold is
positioned to be a part of this continuing success. California is famous for its
high-grade veins, which produced significant gold in the past, and its new
business-oriented approach is opening up new opportunities.
From its offices in Reno, Nevada, Bullion River Gold
is actively exploring a number of gold-silver properties in the most prospective mineral
belts, properties with the potential to become producing mines.
CEOCFOinterviews: Mr.
Kuhn, what was your vision at the start of Bullion River and where are you today?
Mr. Kuhn: “The vision was to create the next American
Gold Producer. When I started in 2001 to look at properties in the United States, I was
specifically looking for gold and silver properties because the United States has been the
third largest producer of gold; it has very high-grade gold mines historically. I also
wanted to eliminate any currency risk. Gold is traded in U.S. dollars and your income
should be in the same income as your costs. I have worked all over the Americas in my past
career and I have seen excellent mines taking a terrible beating because the currency
market has changed drastically. If you look at South Africa for example, at the moment,
the South African gold mines have been some of the most prolific ones in history. They
were suffering the increase of the land vs. the U.S. dollar, so I wanted to eliminate that
risk as well. I am an absolute high-grade fanatic, which means the mines I look at and the
properties I look at have to have the potential of very high-grade average gold volumes
because the high-grade really defines your profitability.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Will
you tell us about what you have assembled?
Mr. Kuhn: “We have assembled our properties in Nevada.
Nevada is the third largest gold producer in the world and high-grade properties in
California. California has been a tremendous gold producer and big companies and
exploration companies have neglected it in the last few years because of the political
situation in California. However, I am a firm believer that if you do things right and
work with the government agencies, you can work in California just as well as with any
other part of the United States. We are getting a lot of good response from the government
agencies. We have discovered two real gems in California with the French Gulch and the
North Fork.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Will
you tell us more about those properties?
Mr. Kuhn: “French Gulch is most intriguing; it has been
mined until 2002. For us it is interesting because the mine still has all of the required
permits, however the mine has been operating on a small-scale and it is a difficult layout
in the sense that they were only horizontal drifts in and out. Certain high grades have
been mined, but they were not able to extend it efficiently downwards. We know that we
have the high-grade veins, which are meso- thermal veins, which means that they are likely
to continue down to a significant depth and that is what we are drilling right now. The
drill results, which haven been published in three press releases are stunning. Anything
over an ounce of gold is fantastic for an underground mine. We really like what we are
seeing there. We are also working on the engineering environmental studies; we got the
Phase I environmental assessment completed right now. We had a press release yesterday
with super results and particularly if one keeps in mind that these are not complicated
procedures using cyanide, just gravity and floatation, which are environmentally friendly.
We got results back with recoveries of between 96.5 to 99.5%, which blew us away. We were
delighted to see it. We want to get the French Gulch into production this year. We expect
to start a decline within the next four to six weeks, which will bring us down to lower
levels. It will be the main production decline. This decline has two purposes; one is to
take the drill rig down deeper and drill more in the area where we know the vein systems
are and it is pre-production development as well.”
CEOCFOinterviews: What
about North Fork?
Mr. Kuhn: “North Fork is the mine, I believe, which will
really put us on the map. North Fork has quite a vein system and we expect to bring it
into production in the next eighteen to twenty-four months. We are rehabilitation their
decline. We were hampered by the storms here in California and Nevada quite a bit. The
work was interrupted several times. We have now finalized our set-up; we have hooked right
into the power line. Our people on the site have done a good job and are starting the
underground rehabilitation very soon now; actually, we have started it now. We will be
drilling somewhere this summer. The company is progressing very aggressively to bring
these two mines into production as soon as we can. I repeat, French Gulch sometime this
year and North Fork somewhere between eighteen and the next twenty-four months. We also
continue drilling in Nevada on the five properties, which we have there. These properties
are not as advanced as the two mines in California, which have been past producers; these
properties have been partially drilled but we think that particularly deeper, we have very
good potential to find more ore. We have two grass roots projects; one in the very
prolific Cortez Trend where we are drilling right now.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Is it
a deliberate mix, having properties in different stages?
Mr. Kuhn: “Absolutely! We went out and looked at the
portfolio of different companies. We wanted to be the next great American producer of
gold, but we also wanted to give our shareholders the blue sky for discovering a big mine
here in Nevada as well. We do not have the financial means to acquire huge properties or
big producing companies, so we have to find a different way of doing our own exploration
and developing our properties and to see if we can have three producing mines by the year
2010.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Will
you tell us about the expertise of the management team as a whole, what allows you to
identify correctly the potential?
Mr. Kuhn: “I want to start with our V.P. of exploration,
Dr. Jacob Margolis (MSc, PhD), whom is an excellent geologists with rare academic
credential in the field experience and mining geology as well. He worked for Homestake
Mining Company and AngloGold Ltd. (NYSE: AU); for AngloGold he was a geologist at the
Jerritt Canyon mine. He was involved in a few discoveries here in Nevada. He was the
president of the Nevada Geological Society; he knows Nevada very well, and is familiar
with the systems. I was lucky to get Jake involved in our company. In the active
management is our V.P. of engineering Glenn C. Blachford (BASc, P.Eng). I have worked with
Glenn ever since I came to North America in 1987. He is one of the best detail engineers
that I know, and I was very happy that he joined us. Our CFO, Dan Graves just recently
came on-board; a very diligent individual, a great financial guy and accountant; I am very
happy that we could get him on-board with our company, just as much as Leann Pinguelo who
looks after the investor relations.”
CEOCFOinterviews: What
are you bringing to the table?
Mr. Kuhn: “I am a mining engineer. I grew up in Germany
and went to a technical university there. I have a masters of engineering degree. I worked
in Germany for about four years, went into Canada in 1987 as a young engineer and worked
mainly in the Uranium in the field, in Northern Saskatchewan in mining camps. I worked my
way up and became vice president and entry president of Thyssen Mining Construction of
Canada, which was one of the preeminent mining contractors in North America. When I was at
the helm we expanded the operation from 250 to over a 1000 people. I expanded the
operation to the U.S., particularly Nevada; that is where my love for Nevada comes. I also
expanded their operation to South America; Chile, Brazil, and Argentina.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Will
you tell us about your recent financing, and where will it take you?
Mr. Kuhn: “We have done a 4.8 million-dollar financing
at seventy-five cents for the full dollar. What it has done is enable us to aggressively
build these mines. We are going to spend over two million at the French Gulch and a
million-and-a-half at the North Fork and we are doing small but effective drill programs
on all the other properties. We are going to spend anywhere from $150 to $200 thousand in
each small drill program. We are spreading the money of our investors around to our
properties, which are our number-one priorities like French Gulch and North Fork. We
believe this money enables us to get us tot the production level to make a production
decision within the next six to eight weeks and to bring the French Gulch into production
this year.”
CEOCFOinterviews: Why
should potential investors be interested and what should they know that perhaps they do
not realize when they first look at the company?
Mr. Kuhn: “We have our finances and we are putting the
money into the ground. Last year we spent over 63% of the money in the ground, this year
it will be over 80%. The focus is clearly to get the investor dollars into the ground and
develop these mines so that we can go into production and develop a mid-year producer. We
still have a huge blue-sky potential but we will also have solid revenues by the end of
the year and that clearly separates us from all the junior mining companies.”
CEOCFOinterviews: In
closing, how do you reach investors?
Mr. Kuhn: “We reach investors through an aggressive P.R.
program. We field a lot of phone calls and we are going out to shows mainly in the U.S. We
are reaching the communities locally and all across the U.S. Even the new companies like
Bullion River, become quite well known. We have a great following in New York and a good
following in California. We are expanding across the United States. We have quite a bit of
work to do yet; you cannot reach everybody in such a short period of time but we can be
proud of what we have accomplished so far. If we go into production by the end of the
year, not many companies can say that within two years of their existence they have
produced well.”
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